Let's ignore the existing international relations of economy and power and assume we get complete freedom to choose on the basis of location and population distribution. What city would be the best choice as capital of an imagined utopian world state where all nations are equal?
If you take interplanetary travel into consideration, then anything on the equator has cheapest access to earth orbit. You also want an east coast where you can use the ocean as a saftey buffer. Brazil, Singapore.
Only if you add two extra stages to the launch rocket, plus lots of extra shielding to counteract the small particles of disintegrated satellites moving in orbit the opposite direction. All that stuff reduces payload to the vanishing point.
Shavit-1 only has three stages; are you saying that if it launched to the east it would have been a single-stage-to-orbit vehicle? Man, the Israelis are even better at this than I thought...
And AFIK, none of the Ofeq satellites have yet been destroyed by orbital debris. For reasons which are left as an exercise for the student.
"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space."
I don't know about that. A nearly 2000 mph swing in the speed you start with can have a fair effect on how much fuel you need to get to orbital speed, & hence the payload you can launch with a given vehicle. I think it's a valid consideration & still favors launching Eastward over water. I'd reserve "essentially meaningless" for something on the order of whether you'd need a Suburban vs. Expedition to tow a trailer.
Hawaii ... inside one of its active volcanoes. I'd tell the politicians that the assembly hall is right underneath the molten lava and they'll need to dive in to get into it. I'd even offer to help toss them in.
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